Friday, April 27, 2007

Views of urban space is an interesting realm to which Google with their mapping applications are currently developing a quasi-monopoly on. Yet, it's kind of funny how for example places are being marked in Google Maps - its slightly weird red markers don't scale with the aeriel photographs below, cast a gigantic shadow but already have gained an iconic quality to them.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Black Snake Moan is smart and soulful but it’s also red hot. The movie burns with the sweaty heat of the deep, deep south. It’s not afraid of sex, nudity, and smoldering, immorality. The film also knows a thing or two about beautiful, bad ass cursing. Fuck flies out of Sam Jackson’s mouth better than it does from just about anyone; when he says the word it’s poetry. Brewer’s movie uses his talent for vulgar language to full effect. His character is an instantly iconic southern figure, an elderly, hardened farmer who loves god, dirty music, and foul language in almost equal measure. This is Sam’s best role since Pulp Fiction, it’s the kind of part I’d always imagined him playing after working for Tarantino, it’s just taken a while for it to happen.

The ads' cleverly implied "Which guy would you rather be?" message and visceral punch have created love-'em/hate 'em camps, probably roughly split between people who consider themselves innovators versus those struggling to keep up with new technology. In other words, precisely the dynamic that Apple--renowned for keeping its marketing strategies as close to the vest as its product plans--presumably had in mind. The instantly iconic campaign quickly spawned satiric takeoffs ("The Lost Mac Ads") on VH1.

At one time, I was a cool mac guy. A long long time ago in college I owned an Apple MacIntosh SE. No hard drive. But I loved it.

Monday, February 26, 2007

"The word Africa doesn’t usually make one consider shopping, but our (RED) Community Barcode ties together Africa and consumers in a striking symbol that's instantly iconic. The barcode is composed of images of a community of people resembling African warriors, and is set up to be a working barcode."

If you don't know, (RED) was created by the iconic Bono and Bobby Shriver "to raise awareness and money for The Global Fund by teaming up with the world's most iconic brands to produce (PRODUCT)RED branded products. A percentage of each (PRODUCT)RED product sold is given to The Global Fund. The money helps women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa."

I truly hope that the (RED) brand and barcode become instantly iconic. People want to associate with iconic things. Which motivates them to buy things associated with the iconic thing. In this case, it's a good thing.

So I was reading the "Postscript" of the Letters section in the March 2007 issue of Vanity Fair. Two words jumped out at me in the opening paragraph, take a guess at what they are:

"Aptly, the lasting image of Vanity Fair's "London Swings! Again!" article and portfolio (March 1997) is of a doomed couple: Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit. Lorenzo Agius's photograph of the soon-to-be-married Oasis singer and sex-bomb actress, sprawled out on a Union Jack bedspread, was instantly iconic in Britain, where it appeared on V.F.'s cover" (left).

Wow, instantly iconic. Now that would make a great name for a website (and blog). Luckily for me, the domain name was available, and I grabbed it.

Of course, instantly means now. Iconic represents a symbol or icon of a thing. The thing can be a moment in time, a style of art or architecture, a brand, a trademark (I'm a trademark attorney by the way), a sound, a movie, etc.

Examples of things that are iconic is the photo above, so sayeth V.F. Other iconic photographs include the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima and the picture of the Vietnamese man being executed.

A person can be iconic, such as Marilyn Monroe.

So what's the purpose of this site? Here, I hope to point out things that I think that are instantly iconic, or maybe just iconic. Feel free to e-mail me (instantlyiconic @ gmail . com) or post a comment with your suggestion of instantly iconic things. I'll try to see if I can get a vote feature on my posts. Any tips on how to do that?